Vince Cable and the Telegraph sting – should he sue?

The business secretary might well be within his rights to find a means to sue or report the paper for breach of parliamentary privilege – which the sting surely was in interfering with his duties as Twickenham's MP

What with Julian Assange explaining his complex self on Radio 4's Today programme and Vince Cable being turned over by the Daily Telegraph in his own constituency surgery, it's a challenging day for media ethics and our ideas about privacy, let alone trust.

Cable first. As you must have heard by now the business secretary was interviewed without realising it by undercover reporters posing as mums worried about benefit cuts. The result: today's "I could bring down the government" headline here. The Guardian's version, what the trade calls a "catch up", is here.

Unsurprisingly, Dr Cable told the Telegraph that negotiations can be difficult within the coalition but that everyone knows he has a "nuclear option" to resign. Don't quote me outside, he told the Twickenham mums. Were the mums unshaven, I asked myself, or sporting moustaches? Didn't Vince notice anything odd?

As with WikiLeaks there's not really much very surprising about this. Much of the value lies in the titillation provided by clandestine methods and frank language. But we all know Cable – the cabinet's Hamlet, I call him – has been fighting semi-public battles over bank bonuses and break-ups, over tuition fees and much else.

And – as with the US diplomatic cables (no relation) we have been reading courtesy of Mr Assange – it's to Cable's credit that he says nothing in his supposedly private conversation that is different from what he says in public. Good. It would only have been a story if he'd said something dishonest like: "The banks have promised me a free supply of call girls if I go easy on the bonus issue. Great, isn't it?"

But what about the Telegraph's own behaviour? We'll come to that. There's an old Fleet Street adage that dog doesn't eat dog, an adage widely if selectively ignored.

Perhaps the Guardian should treat both men the same, some Tory chums suggest by way of a tease. Fair point. Meanwhile, today's Times has come after the Guardian, interviewing Assange in his country retreat, under a paywall headline "WikiWars: Assange turns on friends, foes and lovers."

Having initially condemned the Guardian for publishing the early Wiki leaks, and then itself publishing the one about top US infrastructure targets (the Guardian decided there was no public interest and some risk to the targets in doing so), the Times has now gone back on the attack. That's what papers do, especially when times are hard: they bite other dogs.

I mention all this to provide context. "The Telegraph has a scoop, so don't whinge, Mike" is one way of looking at it. Freedom of the press justifies entrapment of a cabinet minister, incidentally a Lib Dem cabinet minister, not a Tory. They don't like Cable, went after him over his (tiny) expense claims.

But does it justify the sting?

Cable gives interviews to whomever he pleases – or not. He is a pretty open chap, too open perhaps, too prone to wear his big heart on his sleeve.

In any case he is regularly accountable in public, in parliament and to his Twickenham constituents. That's what he thought he was being when talking to the two wired reporters. As a local MP he has obligations of confidentiality to constituents – MPs take this very seriously and so they should. People can lose their jobs, homes (landlords can be nasty), even children if private conversations get leaked.

In other words, they – and he – are entitled to some privacy. It was a principle that Assange repeatedly raised, unembarrassed, when asked about his sexual conduct by the BBC's John Humphrys this morning. Talking about such matters "is not what a gentleman does", he explained, deadpan.

My feeling is that there was no public interest justification for the Telegraph sting. It's not as if the tape proved that Vince likes cocaine or underage rent boys, both illegal activities and thus legitimate targets of press inquiry – as was the News of the World's Pakistani match-fixing probe, but not its hacking into royal or celeb gossip.

Times are hard in our business. But the Telegraph did this only last month to Lord Young, who made some unguarded remarks about the unemployed in what he must have thought was a private lunch at an expensive West End restaurant. The tape ended up on the paper's website and he had to resign as a Cameron adviser, silly man. There are rumours there are more such stings up the Telegraph's pinstriped sleeves.

Vince will not walk the plank. He might well be within his rights to find a means to sue or report the paper for breach of parliamentary privilege – which the sting surely was in interfering with his duties as Twickenham's MP. But politicians have long been cowed and rarely take such steps unless the case is watertight and then some.

Cowed by whom? By the media usually. Was it not the Telegraph that obtained (bought?) the discs containing all those details of MPs' expenses and ran them for weeks? It was and there was a defendable public interest in doing so, though it was much exaggerated and exploited by us all. Most MPs were OK – are OK. All MPs are accountable.

Who would sue nowadays? Why, people like the reclusive Barclay twins, Dave and Fred, tax-exiles who own the Daily Telegraph and ferociously defend their own privacy on their absurd "castle" at Brecqhou in the Channel Islands. Their cautious Wikipedia entry gives barely anything about their attempts to use the courts, French courts as well as ours, including suing the Times. Google it yourself. Would the paper try this on with a City tycoon, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it. They have hot lawyers.

You may know my line: no one's perfect; let's try to be more tolerant and judge others as we would hope to be judged. In that spirit – reinforced by Christmas cheer – I urge you to listen to the BBC's Assange interview, broadcast in two parts, all of which (I think) you can find here.

That is what I'd call a scoop, a tribute to Humphrys, whom I sometimes criticise for excessive aggression but who played this assignment with probing skills. As you'd expect Assange sounds complicated, he makes good points and some, political and personal, that made me flinch.

To me he comes across as clever, solitary, geeky, convinced of his own virtue who says things like "everyone would like to be a messiah figure without dying" and believes he is changing the world for the better.

Listen and form your own festive judgment.

1.30pm update: Telegraph colleagues assure me that the terms of Lord Young's interview were agreed with him and there was no element of subterfuge involved.